Gay rights case has Alabama grad in Supreme Court

Charles J. Cooper graduated from the University of Alabama's law school in 1977.

Submitted | Tuscaloosa News

By Patrick RupinskiBusiness Editor

Published: Thursday, March 28, 2013 at 3:30 a.m.

Last Modified: Wednesday, March 27, 2013 at 11:18 p.m.

Tuscaloosa has more than a passing role in the battle over gay marriage unfolding this week before the U.S. Supreme Court.

For it was in Tuscaloosa that the legal thinking of one of the men defending traditional marriage first developed.

Charles J. Cooper, the Washington attorney who argued in favor of California's ban on gay marriage before the high court on Tuesday, earned his law degree from the University of Alabama.

Cooper, the chairman and a founding member of the Washington, D.C., law firm of Cooper & Kirk PLLC, graduated from UA's School of Law in 1977.

According to his biography on the law firm's website, he was editor in chief of the Alabama Law Review while at UA and graduated first in his law school class.

Cooper, who was born in Dayton, Ohio, also earned his undergraduate degree with honors from UA's business school in 1974. He remains a member of the Alabama Bar as well as the District of Columbia Bar, according to his office.

Cooper, 61, could not be reached for comment on Wednesday.

The New York Times described Cooper in a news article on Wednesday as a more traditional conservative who is an originalist who argues the letter of the law and the original meaning of the Constitution.

The Times said Cooper's colleagues describe him as a meticulous and cautious lawyer with a formal style.

After graduating from law school, Cooper became a law clerk for a federal appeals court judge. In 1978, he became a law clerk for William Rehnquist, then a U.S. Supreme Court associate justice.

Rehnquist later became chief justice and in 1998, as chief justice, he appointed Cooper, who was then in private practice, to the Standing Committee on Rules of Practice and Procedure of the Judicial Conference of the United States.

Cooper joined the U.S. Justice Department's Civil Rights Division in 1981, and in 1985, President Ronald Reagan appointed him assistant attorney general for the Office of Legal Counsel. While in that post, he testified before Congress in the Iran-Contra investigation.

After leaving the Justice Department in 1988, Cooper became a private practice attorney and was a partner in two law firms in Washington before founding Cooper & Kirk in 1996.

Cooper has argued other cases before the U.S. Supreme Court and has been involved in other high-profile cases.

He represented Duke University lacrosse players falsely accused of rape and their teammates in a lawsuit against Duke and the city of Durham, N.C.

In 2003, Associated Press reports showed Cooper as one of the lawyers representing the State of Alabama in a civil lawsuit against Exxon Mobil. Alabama accused the energy company of underpaying the state royalties from natural gas wells the company drilled in state waters.

A Montgomery jury returned a verdict awarding the state $102.8 million in compensatory damages and $11.8 billion in punitive damages. The judge reduced the punitive damages to $3.5 billion, which then was one of the largest civil awards ever. In 2007, however, the Alabama Supreme Court reduced the total award to $51.9 million.

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